Love, Tommy: Letters Home, from the Great War to the Present DayWritten by Andrew Roberts

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A legacy of an empire and a nation at war, Love Tommy, is a collection of letters housed at the Imperial War Museum sent by British and Commonwealth troops from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa from the frontline of war to their loved ones at home. Poignant expressions of love, hope and fear sit alongside amusing anecdotes, grumbles about rations and thoughtful reflections, eloquently revealing how despite the passage of time many experiences of the fighting man are shared in countless wars and battles. From the muddy trenches of the Somme to frozen ground of the Falklands to the heat and dust of Helmand today, these letters are the ordinary soldier's testament to life on the frontline.

Andrew Roberts is the author of Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West (which won the International Churchill Society Book Award) and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900 (which won the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Book Award). His other books include Napoleon and Wellington, Eminent Chuchillians, and Salisbury, which won the Wolfson History Prize. His latest book, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War won the British Army Military Book of the Year for 1010. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University and lives in New York City.